


The Sun and the Moon

by MoonQueen17640



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, M/M, Sibling Incest, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-12
Updated: 2013-12-12
Packaged: 2018-01-04 10:04:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,235
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1079672
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MoonQueen17640/pseuds/MoonQueen17640
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Facing imminent doom in Moria, Ori reflects back to Fili and Kili and both the strength with which they faced death, and how they taught him to understand life and love.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Sun and the Moon

**Author's Note:**

  * For [liddie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/liddie/gifts).



> This is a tear-jerker, I'm not going to lie. It contains canonical character death from both the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings. Please, if you can spare the time, leave kudos or comments, either complimentary or critical. They truly mean the world to me :) Enjoy, everyone.

        “Drums… Drums in the deep. We cannot get out. They are coming.” Ori frantically scribbled the last line on the blood-spattered page before him, threw his pen down and grabbed his war-hammer, hurriedly standing and facing the oncoming tide of horrors. On the opposite side of the barricaded door he could hear the stamping of hundreds of flat goblin feet and could hear their squawks of anger and menace echoing around the silent room that housed the last dwarven defense in Moria.

        Ignoring his pounding heart, Ori glanced over to Balin, seeing the old warrior battle-ready but with a sad look in his otherwise steely gaze. Balin knew, Ori realized. He knew what the younger dwarf had recognized only moments earlier. He knew that they had no chance. He knew that their lives would end here amid carnage and chaos. He knew it was over, and yet he stood to face his demise head-on and without fear. He wore the same look that Ori had seen those many years ago in different eyes and in a different battle. In that moment, the cavernous room fell away from the scribe as he was thrown into memories of the horrific battle for Erebor so long ago.

        Unlike Thorin and Balin, Ori had grown up in Ered Luin and the Blue Mountains. He had never had the honor of calling Erebor his home. He lived with his brothers and played with his more distant kin. There were two young dwarves who became his closest friends and confidants, even though he knew that he could never be as close to them as they were to each other. The sun and the moon, the stars and the sky, the light and the dark. Fíli and Kíli, the two halves of one soul.

        They told him that the moment they lay their eyes on one another, their hearts stopped beating, and then resumed again moments later in perfect synchronicity. They knew from that moment on that nothing would ever separate them. They glowed. Their youthful exuberance became an aura around them, and sometimes Ori would be blinded by the sheer passion and strength of the light. They were never as strong when parted as they were together. They became One, a unit of heart and soul with kindness and playfulness that was matched by no others. They completed each other’s sentences without thinking, leaving Ori gaping at the ease with which they communicated without spoken words. It was only a matter of time before they realized their true love for one another. Brotherly hugs became quiet stolen kisses in darkened rooms and the fleeting brushing of hands when there were no eyes on them. Elderly conservative naysayers berated them for indecency and condemned them because of their love. They obviously could not see what Ori saw between the brothers; the electricity that crackled when they kissed and the harmonies created when they made love behind closed doors. Ori could never see the point in trying to hide such beauty.

        Though they were one soul they were two distinctly different people. Kíli was the dark, the panther, the raven and the moon. His wild hair and bright eyes drew people to him with a charisma that left Ori staring after him with a knowing smile. His recklessness and eagerness to concoct grand schemes would often cause more trouble than good, but his silver tongue and expressiveness led him off the hook more often that not. Fíli was his opposite, the other half of his existence. The heir, the light, the lion and the sun. He was cautious where his brother was wild, calm where he was quick to anger, and the steady hand that Kíli always looked to for guidance. Ori was drawn to them like a moth to a flame and couldn’t begrudge them when they left him to burn in the aftermath of their antics while they escaped on whispered lies of apologies. He would forever revolve around them and was satisfied to do so; he was honored to be able to witness their undying love.

        The day Thorin told them of his plans to reclaim their long lost homeland, their eyes glittered with imagined riches and visions of gilded halls and extravagant rooms made for mischief. Princes they might have been, but they were always children first to Ori’s eyes. That night they sang deep and rumbling songs of forgotten gold with their uncle, bringing tears to the young scribe’s eyes with the longing and desperation in their voices and the love and excitement that radiated from every pore of their skin.

        When the company of misfit dwarves arrived in Hobbiton, the two princes felt free to express themselves. They hardly spent a moment not entwined around each other, leaving it nearly impossible for Ori to tell where one ended and the other began. He would watch them with kind eyes, reveling in the depth of their feelings for one another. Anyone who took them to be immature or childish had never seen Fíli’s rage when his younger brother came to harm, rage that seemed to make the earth tremor. They had clearly never heard Kíli’s unabashed screams when Fíli was injured, no matter how minor it may have been. The darkness within them had free reign whenever the other was in danger. It made them that much more terrifying in battle, but also that much more vulnerable. Ori knew simply by glancing at them that one could not exist without their counterpart. The world would no longer sparkle and glow as it once did if they could not delight in it with the other. If they were to die, they would fall together.

        Ori watched helplessly as his princes slowly lost their innocence. In a way he had wished to protect them from the true nature of the world, if only to never have to see their complete and utter heartbreak when one was almost crushed beneath giants made of stone or when the other was nearly killed by spider venom. They grew up too quickly. The light of childhood left their eyes in a flash, replaced in turn by a battle-hardened look of fear and trepidation. They cleaved more fiercely to each other than ever. Their hands were forever intertwined, and Ori felt that he would do anything to see them smile and joke as they once did.

        When they saw Erebor for the first time, Ori could see the tears of hope glistening in their eyes, and he heard Fíli promise his brother that he would yet see him in a shining mithril Prince Consort crown. That night, the sounds of their desperate lovemaking brought Ori to tears. He could hear their fear and their need for reassurance of the other’s safety. It broke his heart to see his friends so lost.

        On the day of battle Ori listened as the princes quarreled, Fíli pleading his brother to stay behind for his own safety. He heard the fiercely adamant shouts of the other and the tearful statement that they would face the oncoming evil together, if only for honor in death. Ori saw them step onto the battlefield with steely determination, wearing matching rings on silver chains around their necks engraved with promises of love and strength for all eternity, and he smiled sadly as they kissed passionately before him, pouring out their fear and longing and pain into one another before the start of the attack. He watched them separate and shed his own tears for two lovers who never should have been forced to leave each other.

        The battle was horrific, five armies meeting in blood and terror, surging at each other again and again. Even against seemingly hopeless odds the dwarves pressed on, led by the two in the center of the fray: one golden haired and caked with sweat and dirt and the other dark haired and plastered with blood not his own. They fought for each other as much as they fought for their adopted homeland, and Ori didn’t think he’d ever seen a more beautifully formidable sight in all his life. They fought as a single unit divided into two bodies, they fought as One.

        Ori remembered them facing down the pale Orc without fear. They stood tall and noble as the princes they had become and he felt a rush of pride for his friends as they took on the hulking beast before them. Kíli was the first to fall, a mess of blood and gore as the Defiler nearly gutted him. Fíli’s cries of pure heartbreak rang in Ori’s head for years. The blond dropped to his brother’s side, cradling his head and pushing aside his bangs, whispering sweet nothings in his ear, more to bring himself comfort than to heal his dying kin. He fought his foe with the anger of a betrayed lover, eventually decapitating the orc, though not before another had hit his spine from behind with a heavy ax. Fíli didn’t even look to see his enemy fall; his eyes were only on the small dwarf below him, looking evermore like a child, too young for such horrors. It was almost as though they could not feel their own pain; they were too wrapped up in caring for the other. Ori heard them murmur that all would be fine even as their voices grew fainter and their eyes began to droop. The last thing he could discern was Kíli’s broken and tiny voice telling his brother that he would see him in the Halls of their ancestors and proclaiming his love one last time before slipping away from the world of the living. Fíli’s broken sobs resounded around the nearly empty battlefield, and as the life slowly left him, the blond dwarf began singing a lullaby Ori recognized from when Kíli was unable to sleep as a dwarfling. As the young prince stroked his brother’s dark hair his head began to droop and soon the song was nothing but an echo as Fíli followed his brother into death. Never one without the other. Ori’s tears lasted for days.

        In the end they were buried in the ground they had loved to play on. No one could bear to see their youthful and exuberant energy encased in the unforgiving stones of traditional funerals. It was uncouth but seemed appropriate for two young princes who never should have been called upon to fight for a homeland they had never truly known. Those who had known them could envision them frolicking through the grass, carefree and happy, stopping only for quick kisses and soft declarations of love. In their absence it seemed to Ori that the beauty of the world dimmed slightly, and that the stars did not shine quite as brightly as before when they were not there to revel in the magnificence. The world lost its glow without them.

        As Ori snapped back to the unfolding battle before him, he remembered the look he had seen in both prince’s eyes that day, a look of resignation but of peace, knowing that they would be together again quickly. Ori could see that same look on Balin’s face and felt the same emotions within himself. He wondered if Fíli and Kíli had known that death was in their future, or had simply accepted that whatever their ultimate fate might be, they would face it together, as always. Upon thinking of his friends, Ori felt a wave of peace wash over him. He could feel their strength and their care. He knew that though his life would end soon, he would face it with the same grace that they had and then would see them in the Halls of their Fathers and would be greeted as a hero.

        He could almost hear them teasing him that he had grown up after all, and chuckled, knowing inside that he would never boast of his achievements. They were the flame that loved and spoke so brightly, and he would always be the circling moth. He remembered that the day after their death had been Durin’s Day, the day when the sun and the moon appeared in the sky at the same time. He saw it as the world’s tribute to them, their spirits and likenesses showing themselves simultaneously, as intertwined and dependent as the brothers had been. He had thought he had heard their laughter that night, and had smiled at the knowledge that they were in a far better place and that he would join them in his own time. He could only imagine what mischief they would concoct when the weight of their responsibilities and their knowledge of the horrors of the world had dissipated.

        Ori fought fiercely, doing their memory proud as he defended himself and his friends. Ultimately though, he fell to a blade through his back and saw Balin collapse near him. The world became dark and then faded away slowly, almost gently, and Ori felt the peace and lack of pain that his friends had felt all those years ago.

        The first thing he heard after the blackness began to melt away was the pure laughter of two brothers, and the first things he saw were the silhouettes of two dwarves holding each other’s hand, the light and the dark, the sun and the moon, now in the sky together for all of eternity.


End file.
